


on how much you're worth (and on how much the universe cares about that)

by revoleotion



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Discussion of Grief, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, TRoS Spoilers, basically everyone becomes the Armitage protection squad, resistance Armitage Hux
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:33:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21900247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revoleotion/pseuds/revoleotion
Summary: It’s just him, the ship and the lonely chess board in front of him. Famous generals before him have used chess metaphors and they must’ve sounded very intelligent – but this doesn’t change the fact that Armitage doesn’t know how to play chess.Armitage Hux decides to leave everything behind. He's not sure why he lives but something tells him that he, somehow, deserves it.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & happiness, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 55
Kudos: 208





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some minor and some major TROS spoilers in this one. This is my attempt of fixing some things while staying as close to canon as possible. Come yell at me about this on my instagram (@armitagescat)

The ship is smaller than the ones he usually worked with but (and that’s a rather important “but”) it belongs to him and only him. It was surprisingly easy to steal and now he’s the only inhabitant on it. 

Or her. 

It was a bit absurd to name a Star Destroyer or the Starkiller Base but this ship is a little softer. As soft as ships go. Most importantly, she is quiet. Aside from his own heartbeat and some scanners, the only thing making a noise is the modified mouse droid. Right now, it moves around in circles like it’s looking for something. 

Armitage ignores the urge to kick it. it’s not like he could do it now, anyway. He’s sitting on a bench that actually has been designed for sitting and he hasn’t moved much. His injuries heal slowly but they’re a small price for the freedom in front of his eyes. When he closes them, shadows in his head paint the picture of the way he left. So, he doesn’t close them unless he has to. 

It’s just him, the ship and the lonely chess board in front of him. Famous generals before him have used chess metaphors and they must’ve sounded very intelligent – but this doesn’t change the fact that Armitage doesn’t know how to play chess. He knows what each piece does and he knows that the Queen is the deadliest one. Not the king, which is funny to Armitage in the only way things are funny in a war. Despair and laughter have a lot in common sometimes. 

He turns on the board and tells a pawn to move. Defeat comes quickly and is fairly ugly but unlike in real life, it doesn’t hurt. So, he does it again and lives for a while longer until the eventual bitter defeat. Laughter starts rumbling in his stomach but he keeps it to himself. Who’s there to listen, anyway?

Armitage plays one more game, then he turns off the board and gets up. His watch reminds him to eat and he mumbles, “Guess what I was about to do?” which sounds empty and unnecessarily loud in the abandoned hallway. 

He has made a list of the rations on the ship already, and it’s not too bad. Armitage can stay here for at least a month if he doesn’t get tired of the food. The only thing he misses is the caf but he has found a can of liquid that seemed to have caffeine in it. At least he thinks so because he’s unusually twitchy and awake for the time of the day. He carries the food (what is it? dinner? Midnight snack?) to the bench and sits down again. 

He watches a holonet comedy while he eats. Of course, it’s not funny but it’s entertaining. He finishes his meal but he doesn’t turn off the holo until the episode is over. Suddenly met with silence, he takes a few deep breaths and looks down on his empty plate. Cleaning up is calming. He collects everything that has spread around the ship and does the dishes. 

He doesn’t want to sleep yet. The caffeine still tickles in his legs and he’s not ready for a recap on what he has lost. The ship is too small to move around in but Armitage is not ready for people yet. Not like this, not in that uniform.

He didn’t dare to take it off yet but part of him really wants to. He needs something else to wear first, so he makes his way to the bedroom. Part of what he loves about this ship are the colors. It’s green, a dark green, and so different from the white or red of the First Order. 

Green is a little like space. Calming. Forgiving. 

The bedroom is similar. The bed is meant for one person, which is comforting, and the closet reveals casual clothing with no patches or logos or blood on it. Armitage feels bad as he pulls out a soft pullover, even though he already stole the stranger’s ship and food. 

He also killed the population of three planets. So, why does  _ this _ feel bad? 

Armitage throws the jacket away and puts on the pullover. It’s short but huge at the same time, like it belonged to a small, athletic person. Armitage pulls down the sleeves as far as he can and decides that this is alright. 

Now, the bed. Armitage looks at it and carefully strokes the sheets. They feel soft and he desperately wants to be calm enough to sleep. He sits down, leans back until his back touches the soft silk. 

His head is sinking, drowning in his memories. He closes his eyes, just for a moment, and waits for the waves to take him away. 

\---

The next morning, he wakes up because his watch generated an alarm loud enough to destroy his sense of hearing. Armitage finds himself curled up on the bed and shaking. The silk is drenched in blood. 

“Shit,” she says like he’d say “traitor” (but that’s a bit funny now, isn’t it?). he gasps as the pain spreads in his body, his hands start shaking and his watch alerts him, “blood loss, critical. Condition critical.”

“I know!” Armitage roars with the despair of someone whose death is about worth as much as his life. He pushes himself up and stumbles to the cupboard, collapsing in front of it. The new, stolen pullover is ruined; he rips it apart at the effort of stopping the bleeding. He ruins at least three mint green towels until he finds the bandages. He’s almost crying once he’s done. His vision is a blurry mess and he’s too weak to get up. 

Something bumps against his worse leg. Armitage curses but there’s nobody to hear it. The droid makes a noise he now understands as offense. 

“No need to scan me, I know that I’m dying. It doesn’t matter.”

It’s odd of him to think that. He’s always put survival first, then pettiness. He likes to think that the latter got him killed and the first one made sure he escaped. 

He leans against the cupboard and closes his eyes. 

“Traitor,” he says to himself. 

The droid beeps. 

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine.”

After all, he never cared about winning. Winning is a privilege you get when playing chess. He doesn’t get to win. He gets to pull people down when he falls. 

At least betrayal looks good on him. He likes to think that. 

Sleepless nights, mourning  _ her _ death and bitterness, so much bitterness. He lived to see others die. He lived to see Kylo Ren die. He died. With no impact on the world. That’s just how it is to be evil. To be a cur. 

So, why does he cling onto life? Why does he fix himself up every morning and why can’t he stop looking outside and see something he deserves?

He didn’t do anything good. This isn’t redemption. This is survival. Every day he lives is a victory over Brendol Hux and now also over the bastard that…

His vision goes black when he tries to think about it. he gives himself ten seconds, then he takes a deep breath. There has to be medication on the ship; anything for the pain and to help him recover from the blood loss. 

It takes him a few hours to collect himself. He blacks out a couple of times and finds himself on the ground, but he always gets up again and continues searching. 

Once he finds what he’s looking for, there’s a large rock stuck in his throat and tears fall to the ground, next to the dried blood. 


	2. Chapter 2

He recovers. 

He takes meds and cleans the wound and eats his rations and consumes and unhealthy amount of holonet broadcast. Which is a different escape than the one he knows. Watching shows isn’t helping anyone. Not even himself. 

But he doesn’t wake up bleeding anymore. One day, the pain disappears. And the day he needs to stock up on food and supplies, the gunshot wound has been reduced to an ugly scar. 

The clothes still won’t fit but Armitage finds something presentable as he lands on a small planet. He notices that there is no First Order presence, or anyone, really. The planet seems to be deserted. 

Which is good. Until someone calls his name. 

Armitage freezes. The panic is back, worse than ever. He doesn’t even have a weapon. It’s just him and a person who could take the little life, the little freedom, he has. 

Armitage lifts his shaky hands and slowly turns around. There's a man looking at him, a man with dark skin and a slight smile occupying most of his face. 

“Hugs, was it not?” he asks. 

Armitage wants to disappear in space. He wants to become space. He can't go out like this, but blast, he deserves it. 

“Make it quick,” he begs. 

The ex-trooper (FN? Finn?) looks at him like he just suggested smoking sticks together. 

“Huh?” he asks. 

Armitage inhales shakily and steps closer. 

“If you kill me, make it quick please. I already got shot unsuccessfully, I can't take another one.”

There’s a small pause. Armitage can’t read the man’s expression, and that bothers him more than he’d like to admit. The longer they look at each other, the less he will be ready for death. 

“I thought we are even,” Finn says after a while. “And  _ you _ asked me to shoot you, so…” 

“I wasn't talking about you,” Armitage hisses and feels his vision go blank when he thinks about it. 

When he can see again, a hand touches his shoulder and a voice asks, “You're okay?” 

Armitage wants to flinch away from the touch. He hasn't been touched in months, at least not like this. Instead, every tension leaves his body and he starts sobbing silently. He crumbles with the touch, and when he thinks that he can't do it anymore, he's being pulled into a hug. 

He doesn't have the strength to escape it and he doesn't want to. He's crying tears for Phasma, for the First Order, for everything he wanted to be and for the person that died when the laser pierced his body. He isn't sure what's left, apart from the ship and the clothes that he has stolen. 

Maybe there's nothing left. 

“What are you even doing here?” the ex-trooper asks and even though Armitage's vision is a blurry mosaic built of shadows, he knows that he is guiding him somewhere. He decides to trust him. 

“I'm getting…” he starts but interrupts himself. “Why didn't you kill me?” 

“I'm sort of the General of the rebels now, I can't just run around and kill people.”

“I don't qualify as  _ people. _ ”

“No, but last time I checked you made sure me and my friends escaped. And I'm going to go ahead and assume that you were shot by one of the bad guys, which almost makes you a good guy.”

The logic is hard to follow, even with a brain that works at normal capacity. Armitage's brain is recovering slowly, like the rest of him. And the pain still isn’t gone; it’s a constant reminder that he is vulnerable and that he is a chess piece about to be sacrificed. 

“I wouldn’t want to be that,” Armitage says after some consideration, “I just want to live.”

He feels the man’s disgust rather than he sees it. It’s not a nice way to be looked at but he gets it, sort of. Finn is a believer, that’s why he left the First Order. Armitage is, and will ever be, a traitor to everyone he ever meets. 

“I’m sorry,” he hears himself say quietly. “If that means anything to you.”

Finn doesn’t give him an answer, which should be okay but fills Armitage with dread. Maybe he’s only useful if he’s a rebel. Maybe it isn’t fair to trust Phasma’s murderer. 

They halt a few meters away from a tiny village and Finn steps away from him. 

“There we are,” he says because he’s a person that has to fill silence like that. 

“I’m impressed,” Armitage says even though the only pain he feels is the one of being shot twice a month ago. He leans to the right, so he no longer puts pressure onto his leg. That helps a little. 

The village is colorful, the same kind of colorful he likes with his stolen ship. The planet is small enough that he can see the edge from where he is standing and while the temperature isn’t unlike Jakku, the air is not as dry. If he’s honest, that’s the air he likes most. He never took himself for a man that enjoyed landscapes and villages and colors; maybe he had convinced himself that he couldn’t survive outside of a Star Destroyer. 

“You’re gonna find what you need?” Finn asks and every inch of his face wants that answer to be “Yes”. Armitage considers it, then he nods. He wouldn’t want it any other way. If he were that dependent on an ex-trooper who killed his best friend, he could just ask to be shot again. 

“I have a feeling that you will break down crying two seconds after I leave you but I’m going to make the conscious decision to ignore it,” Finn says and turns away. 

“A feeling?” Armitage asks because he knows what it meant when Kylo Ren said things like that. Kylo Ren, who is gone and who either doesn’t know about his death or who doesn’t care for it. 

“The Force,” Finn explains and raises an eyebrow when he sees Armitage’s face. “What?”

Armitage doesn’t have words left to explain himself. Even thinking about it hurts. He wants to ask if that  _ feeling  _ can tell Finn if Kylo has died. But then again, Armitage’s hatred for Kylo is the one thing that made the resistance trust him. 

“Are you thinking that I shouldn’t be able to use the Force because I’m a trooper?”

“I am not wasting my thoughts on you,” Armitage hisses and almost feels like himself again, “I am currently busy trying to find out how to survive on my own because Kylo Ren didn’t make the effort to contact me ever since-”

Finn’s face says everything. Armitage feels his stomach drop, the world drop, and suddenly he’s on the ground. He looks up to the man he shouldn’t trust but the only one that feels remotely like home. He squeezes his eyes shut and counts to ten in his head, but the pain only gets worse. When was the last time he saw him? Did he get to say something nice or has it been a wasted goodbye?

“He saved Rey. He saved all of us,” Finn says after a while. 

And Armitage wants to say ‘he did not save  _ me _ ’ because it’s true, and then again, maybe he was never worth saving. Maybe his survival is an accidental mistake the universe is going to correct soon. It’s a lonely galaxy but without the two people he trusted it’s unbearable. His face feels wet but he can’t make a noise. After something that feels like an eternity, he wipes his face and forces himself to get up. 

“Did you… win?” he asks quietly. 

Finn nods. So, at least Kylo Ren’s death was worth something, Armitage thinks, but it’s not fair. 

“You loved him, didn’t you?” Finn asks. “Which is fun because, honestly, I always thought you and Phasma…”

Her name makes Armitage flinch, so maybe that’s why Finn stops himself. 

“Ah,” he says, “I forgot about that.”

“At least someone forgot about it,” Armitage says. “And I  _ honestly  _ don’t think you need to know my relationship with dead people.”

But Finn knew her too. Not as the woman she really was but he knew her. Maybe he is the only person that can confirm that Phasma has really existed, that she waited in the line for lunch and stared at Armitage until he looked back at her. Finn will be only one that remembers her unproportionally loud laugh, and the way she could curse. 

Finn sighs quietly and shakes his head. 

“Where are you staying at the moment?” he asks him and everything about his body language tells Armitage that he doesn't want to ask that. 

Armitage wipes away some dirt from his knees. His breath trembles when he reaches the leg Finn shot at but he brushes over it anyway. 

“I'm-” what? Okay? Fine? Currently owning a ship I've stolen?

“Why don't you join us? I'm pretty sure the new galaxy needs some… competent people. We don't have many.”

“Tends to happen when someone blows up the government,” Armitage says. 

Finn stares at him. 

“Someone? You did that! You're not allowed to…”

“I shouldn't even be alive, we are way past that.” 

“Right.”

Finn looks over the landscape, and Armitage isn't sure what he sees in it but it makes him smile, apparently. He offers him a hand and Armitage looks down on it. 

“This is metaphorical,” Finn says. “Come with me, please?” 

\---

Green does not look good on him, he thinks when he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror. He has bought new clothes and rations with Finn but then the man took him to the current "base", which resulted in Armitage hiding in his ship until now. He's not ready to meet anyone. 

Besides, he has everything he needs now. He found caf, he won a game of chess for the first time and he is very invested in the holo-shows. Armitage’s life has slowed down to a point of where he almost doesn’t feel himself living. It’s the only way he doesn’t break down again. 

But fate doesn’t allow him this peace, not for long at least. When the summer of the planet slowly collapses into fall, someone knocks on Armitage’s door. 

He doesn’t need the Force to know it’s not Finn. 

“I’m going to come in, no matter what you say.”

He kicks the mouse droid away as he walks to the door. He feels her presence before he pushes the button to let her in; not because of the Force but because he has to know when someone is close at all times. 

The door moves to the side and reveals a woman who’s trying to smile at him but fails. 

“Hello,” she says. 

Armitage looks at her for two seconds, then he stumbles back and shakes his head. 

“Please don’t do this,” he begs (and when did he start doing this, when did he get too weak to fight?). 

Rey offers him a hand, which he flinches away from. 

“I can leave,” he says. “Please, just don’t...”

‘ _ Don’t remember me of him _ ,’ he wants to say, ‘Don’t look at me, I know you loved him, so don’t remind me that I’m hiding from the truth’

He says nothing. He leaves the sentence unfinished and tastes unsaid words on his tongue. Rey looks at him for a few moments, then she makes a step back. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she says. 

Armitage shakes his head and chokes on his, “Please.”

Remembering Ren is more painful than remembering Phasma. Maybe because she always knew that Armitage loved her like the sister he never had. They had no secrets. If she was still alive, nobody would've dared to shoot him. But Kylo Ren died without knowing that Armitage liked him. No, he didn't only like him, he trusted him. Seeing Rey is like looking in a mirror and finding the same loss in her eyes. 

“I was going to thank you,” Rey says. 

“I don't want that,” Armitage manages to say. His voice breaks and he has to take another step back, so he can lean against the table. By now, the memory has been reduced to a dull feeling in his chest and to a headache behind his eyes. When he thinks about it, he sees himself falling, which is odd, and he sees his own dead body on the ground. 

“I didn't do it for you,” he adds. 

“That makes sense. You don't know me,” Rey says and now manages a smile. “And I understand if you never want to get to know me. It must be painful for you.”

It's the first time that someone truly acknowledges his pain, and for some reason this brings Armitage close to tears again. He inhales, exhales, looks at her. This is the woman who hit Ren into the face with a lightsaber. It's also the woman whose trust Armitage almost died for. There are a thousand questions and insults on his tongue, things he thought he'd tell her once he'd found and  _ captured  _ her but those aren't his words anymore. Those are the words of the man whose corpse he sees when he closes his eyes. 

So, “Thank you,” he says quietly. 

They don't talk much after that. He lets her in, offers her caf and turns on the chess board after she asks him to. They both stare at the pieces for a while, then Rey offers to play a game. Armitage nods, puts down his mug and makes sure she's sitting comfortably before he sits down as well. 

“You go first,” she offers. 

“The white ones go first.”

“Yeah,” she smiles, “I know.”

Armitage commands the first piece, then he grabs his mug and leans back on the sofa. He feels safer with the warm drink between his hands. Rey tells her pawn to move, takes a sip of her caf and raises an eyebrow. 

“Was that good?” 

“I have no idea.”

“But you played chess, right?” 

He considers telling her that he had only won once against the table, and that has been in easy mode. He shakes his head instead. Some words are hard, some are easier. They play a few more minutes, then Rey pauses the board and looks at him. 

“You're a better person than you think. I know how it feels when people tell you that they know you but you aren't who you're coming from. You're who you turn out to be.”

For some reason, this sticks with him. He finishes the caf and looks into the empty mug. His hands don't freeze in this atmosphere but they feel heavy and immobile. His past is a compromised ball of memories he pushed to the back of his head. Sometimes that ball rolls towards him, but he always nudges him back, more or less gently. Rey's words awakened those memories, and they roll over him like a tidal wave. 

Armitage hears his voice, “How do you know about my family?”

There's pity in Rey's eyes when she smiles softly. He doesn't dare to look into her face for too long; but if she wanted to read his mind, she could probably do it. He has kept up walls for most of his life but they have been shattered. He wishes he had been brave enough to show some of his memories to Ren. 

“I took a good guess,” she says. 

Armitage knows when someone is lying. He also knows when to push the ball back and move on. His body relaxes when he looks back at the board, and after a small pause, Rey continues playing. They keep up the silence until Armitage wins - which surprises him so much that he forgets to keep that emotion a secret. He flinches when he hears her laugh, probably because he hasn't expect, nor heard a laugh in a long time. 

“You let me win,” he guesses. 

“Prove it.”

“I'm bad at chess.”

“Maybe I'm just worse.”

“You are a terrible liar.”

She smiles. He smiles back. It's a little like with Phasma back then, but without the poison of the First Order surrounding them. They're two humans playing chess, two humans who try to ignore that a part of them got forcefully ripped out of their hearts. 

“How did he die?” Armitage asks once he trusts himself with processing that kind of information. But even if he couldn't, he needs to know. 

Rey sits up straight. The smile vanishes from her face like it has never been there. Something terrible and dark spreads in her eyes, then she blinks and it's gone. 

“You don't have to answer. I'm sorry,” he adds. 

“I can't think about it yet.” 

And that's all she has to say because the void in Armitage's head blocks out everything about his last day with the First Order. When Rey's long gone, he forces himself to get up and to collect the empty mugs. The lights in the ship flicker slightly, and he has to remind himself to feel anything. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me on my instagram (@armitagescat) for this. I'm very sorry.


	3. Chapter 3

Poe Dameron looks around the Cantina like it's the first time he's ever seeing it. This barely makes sense because he called it his “favorite” the second he entered. 

Armitage is busy with his third glass of whatever Finn ordered for him. He's feeling drunk in the good way, the way that makes laughter roll over his tongue and that makes him smile at strangers. The liquid in the glass is bright green (“like your eyes!” an excited Finn has told him) and Armitage didn't have the energy to ask him why that man had payed attention to his eye color. 

“You know what we should do?” Poe asks with the confidence of someone who is drunk but aware of that fact. He has a smile on his face and he sometimes looks over to Finn with something in his eyes he probably doesn’t want the others to notice. Armitage has learnt to notice the slightest changes in a person’s face, that’s why he isn’t surprised that he sees it. What surprises him is the affection. Poe’s feelings for Finn aren’t a secret, at no point during the evening. He watches Finn even when he’s not looking at him. 

Armitage isn’t sure what he’s supposed to feel about this. It makes his stomach ache with longing and jealousy; and it makes him angry because he has spent his days being afraid instead of loving others. 

“Let’s play a game,” Poe suggests and is met with a groan from Finn’s side. 

“No,” Finn says. 

“What kind of game?” Armitage asks. 

“Look at the man, I like him!” Poe smiles at him and Armitage smiles back. 

He’s nervous now; a game could mean anything. Of course he has drunk alcohol before, but this has been something else. He had enjoyed a glass of wine with Phasma, quite literally only one glass because his head would spin and he’d be so afraid of being poisoned that he’d feel physically sick. He doesn’t know what to expect from two drunk rebels. 

“Okay, I’m going to ask a question,” Poe explains, “And you can either drink or answer it. And no Force.”

“I can’t decide if I want to use it or not,” Finn protests and finishes his glass. 

“It’s still cheating.”

“It clearly isn’t.”

“I love you, Finn, but you know that I’m right.”

Armitage looks at the two, and the feeling in his chest is something between icy guilt and warmth. 

“Questions,” he repeats to distract himself from it. It works, at least a little. The two men stop staring at each other, and turn to Armitage instead. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s letting people stare at him. He empties his glass and shivers as the alcohol burns in his throat. 

“Yes, like what’s your favorite animal?” Poe asks and, good Lord, he might be drunker than Armitage suspected at first. It’s still amusing, somehow, the glowing silhouette of a happy, wasted man who could ask everything in the universe and asks for his _favorite animal_. 

“Cats,” he answers. “That’s easy.”

“Cats,” Finn repeats. 

“For real?”, Poe asks. 

Armitage laughs until his chest hurts. He says, “cats” again but it feels odd on his tongue. 

“Am I saying it right? I always wanted an orange cat. Because of the hair.”

“Wow.” Finn says it with an expression that is impossible to read. He sounds disturbed. “You’re doing okay, mate? You can’t drink much, apparently.”

Armitage forces himself to stop laughing and says, “I’m good.”

“He’s not three years old, he has to make his own decisions,” Poe says. “Anyway, next question, please.”

“Why didn’t you kill me?” Armitage hears his own voice. He is sure that he wanted to ask this, but not now and definitely not in public. But it’s out now and he can’t look away from Finn’s dark eyes. 

A second passes. 

Finn orders a new drink and finishes it at once. 

“I’m going to answer,” he says, “Just, give me a second.”

Armitage feels Poe looking at him. And of course, Poe wouldn’t have shot him because they had been corresponding, they had been exchanging all those _spy_ things. But this is Finn. Finn is the man who killed Phasma. Armitage is the man who sentenced Finn to die. 

That’s what war does, right? Taking away the lines between good and evil, so the heroes can save the day and the villains can die? But if Armitage is a villain, why didn’t he die? It keeps repeating in his head. He made a list of all the things he deserves to die for and then he wrote down the one thing he deserves to live for. 

“I’m going to be honest with you. I saw you and I really, really wanted to kill you but you looked really tired and really done, and I didn’t think about the man who wiped out three planets. I saw the man who proudly said, ‘ _It is me! I’m the spy!’_ like an idiot would.”

Poe grins and hides his face behind his glass. “I agree, that was really stupid.” 

“I did not think about it,” Armitage says which makes the other two laugh for some reason. Poe drowns his laughter in his drink, Finn tries the same but half of it lands on his shirt because he’s laughing so hard. This goes on for some uncomfortably long time. Whenever one of them calms down a little, they look at each other and it starts all over again. Armitage accepts his fate and waits for it to stop. 

After maybe ten or fifteen minutes, Finn takes a deep breath and chokes out a, “Of course you didn’t think about it.”

Armitage isn’t sure if he should be offended. He decides to ignore the feeling and orders another drink instead. He has left the stage of comfortable drunkness; now he’s trying to get into that stage where he forgets about everything the next morning. 

“Alright, Poe,” Finn starts. “Why did you never tell me about your ex?”

“Because we both turned out to be gay and that pretty much solved the issue.”

Something in Armitage’s mind clicks, falls into piece and he stares at the two men in disbelief. 

“You’re... gay too?” he asks. 

Poe gives him a look that could’ve killed a person on the spot, but Armitage has gotten a lot of those looks and he is a master of giving them. Before the man can even attempt an answer, Armitage feels tears in his eyes. He apologizes, gets up and immediately sits down again because the room is spinning and he can’t stand on his own. 

“Oh no,” Finn says. 

“Oh yes,” Poe says. 

Armitage doesn’t remember a lot after that. He keeps feeling worse the more time passes, and at some point he’s just thinking, “ _poison, I’ve been poisoned, I deserve this_ ”. He knows that the two make sure that he gets home because he remembers Rey’s soft giggle, him hitting the chess table, Poe saying “Oh shit” - and then it’s morning again. 

\---

His head hurts. Not in the same way he felt it with the blood loss; it’s an annoying kind. It makes him less weak but definitely more annoyed with the light in his room, his droid and the entire galaxy. While Armitage still wonders what woke him up, he hears the noise again. It’s a noise he could hear at the other end of the galaxy, solely because it’s one of the best sounds in the world. 

It’s Kylo Ren’s laughter. 

And this makes no sense. Whatever illusion or torture this is, he has to stop it. Armitage puts on the green pullover he hates so much, grabs a knife from the kitchen and stumbles towards the door. Walking is hard, for some reason, and his stomach hurts. For now, last evening is a blurry mess in his head. He remembers laughing about something. 

Speaking of laugh, there it is again. Closer this time. Armitage’s hands start trembling and he presses them against his ears to make himself stop hearing it. He’s going crazy, he has to be. Maybe he really got poisoned. (Maybe he will end up like his father, and that is the universe’s cruel revenge on him. No, it’s not cruel, it’s fair.) 

When he exits the ship and blinks into the bright sun, he’s hit with the humid air. He takes a deep breath but immediately chokes on it when he sees the man in front of his ship. He’s still taller than him, but something in his face and the way he stands are different. The scar is gone. He’s wearing a plain black shirt that has a tiny hole in the middle, lightsaber-sized. Most importantly, he’s looking at Armitage like they ran into each other in the bathroom and now don’t know how to act. 

Which is exactly how this feels like. 

Armitage slowly lowers his hands and swallows every word that wants to leave his mouth. He walks towards the man that should be (and shouldn’t be) dead, stops right in front of him and slaps him. He has expected his hand to hit nothing because that’s how illusions or ghosts are supposed to work - but instead he hits the man’s cheek and hears a tiny, “Ow”.

This has to be a dream, Armitage thinks and right before he freaks out, the man says, “Green looks good on you.”

“Oh,” Armitage says. “So that's how we do this?” 

“I should tell you that I go by ‘Ben’ now,” the illusion says. 

“Shut up,” Armitage whispers and leans closer to kiss him. He doesn’t think about rejection, even though he knows it’s certain. He thinks that he finally became the person brave enough to kiss him. He has survived because it led him this to this moment. Everything he has ever done lead him to kiss Kylo Ren - no, _Ben_. 

The kiss lasts two seconds and Armitage thinks that his bubble has to burst soon. He has to either wake up or be pushed away or to be killed. Instead, there’s a smile unfolding against his lips; the world regains color and memories collapse until they become one. 

“Ben,” Armitage mumbles and he likes how it sounds and how his tongue tips against his teeth when he says it. 

“Yeah?” Ben asks. 

“I hate you.”

Which is the furthest away from the truth. 

“You are a bad liar,” Ben says and kisses him again. 

Armitage grins as he kisses him back, and there are things he wants to tell him, _I missed you_ and _I almost died for your stupid ass_ and everything in between. But those thoughts disappear when Ben stops the kiss and steps back. 

“I'm with you,” he says. 

\---

Armitage wakes up with what's probably the worst hangover of his life. Fresh tears are on his cheeks but he doesn't bother wiping them away. He's curled up at the bottom of the bed, one foot slightly dangling over the edge. An ugly sob escapes his throat, he presses a hand against his lips and waits until the storm catches him. 

It's not for long but long enough for him to forget what he's been doing and to forget who he is supposed to be. Once he can breathe again, he's lying on his back and his breath trembles against his fingers. He makes no attempt to get up, he knows it's useless. 

There's a knock at his door, “Dude, you're not dead, right?” to which he answers with an, “I'm alive” that gets stuck in his head in an endless circle. 

“Don't forget to drink water!” Poe yells from the outside. “Or else I'm coming in and beat you up until you do it!” 

He's a less gentle reminder than the watch, but Armitage has disabled the watch's alarms the second he entered the bar, knowing that it would act up. So, the reminder is very much needed for because his head is close to exploding. He doesn't answer the pilot and instead tries getting up. 

This is worse than the first weeks, he thinks. The first weeks had been survival, but now he's forced to live with everything. He can't take another dream like this. He'd rather shoot himself than experiencing that again. Which means that he needs distraction (or alcohol) to keep him from remembering his pain. Armitage walks to the kitchen, fills up a glass with water and stares into the distance. He can hear the resistance preparing breakfast together, which makes his stomach curl into a ball of anxiety. 

But it's a distraction. 

He walks to the door and steps into the sun. The first person he sees is Rey who waves at him and smiles. Armitage blinks a couple of times to push away the memory (no _dream_ ) of Ben. 

“Are you doing okay?” she asks. 

“Bad dream,” Armitage answers, not sure why he’s being honest. She could read his thoughts if she wanted and maybe she’s already done it. Like Ben, who was never as bad as he said he was, she’s not as good as others say she is. Armitage has seen the scar on Ben’s face where she slashed him with the lightsaber. But Rey is also the person who let him win at chess, and Armitage blew up three planets, and they’re what war made them to be. 

“Did you have breakfast yet?” Rey asks. “Good that you’re drinking something.”

“Poe reminded me.”

“He’s good at that.”

The thought of a drunk Rey crosses his mind, and it’s a little like drunk Phasma; loud and amused about everything. Can Jedi get drunk, anyway? He has never seen Ben drunk but he might be a bit tougher than Armitage. 

“He really is,” he answers. “But he already did that… before.”

She just looks at him with slight confusion. Armitage thinks about the conversations with Poe, Armitage’s voice and face distorted beyond recognition. He thinks about “ _but you’re doing okay, right? They haven’t found you yet_?” and him not wanting to end that stupid call because he wasn’t sure if he was okay after all. 

Before he can answer, the smell of burning food catches his attention. He removes his eyes from Rey and turns to the collection of tents and ships that they call their rebel base. He hasn’t explored it yet because this is not his place and also not his victory, but now he and Rey run towards the source of the smell. 

The portable stove is in flames. Poe is trying to put it out but he’s not really good at it. Finn stands to his right, laughing so hard that he almost drops the bucket of water in his hands. Rey takes a quick look at Armitage, grins and helps the other two killing off the fire. 

For some reason, this experience settles it. A few resistance members look at him curiously but nobody seems to recognize the tall, skinny man as the monster who wiped out their republic. Armitage can’t say that he’s sad about that. 

They throw together something edible and sit down on a table that’s almost too small for them all. Two girls next to Armitage hold hands and smile at him when he moves to the side to make more room for them. One of them, the blonde one, faintly reminds him of General Organa, which makes no sense because she only had one son (and he’s gone). 

“You look terrible,” Poe tells him. The pilot looks too happy and too awake for someone who just got drunk last night. Finn has the decency to look tired but also amused. 

Armitage reaches for a piece of fruit to put on his plate but is interrupted by Poe loading off a pancake, something vaguely looking like syrup and a bunch of berries right in front of him.

“Excuse me,” Armitage says because he truly has no idea what else to say. 

“Try it, it's made with love.”

“It must be horrible then,” Finn comments but he's already destroying his pancake with his fork. 

“He's bad at cooking,” a girl says from Finn's left. Her body is squeezed into a skin-tight suit and she put down a helmet on her lap. She's pretty, in a way that still doesn't manage to attract Armitage. But then again, he figured that if he's not attracted to Phasma, no woman ever will do the trick. 

“He needs to eat more, seriously,” Poe says and continues slapping pancakes onto people's plates. 

“I'm honored, really,” Armitage mutters and avoids looking anyone in the eye, “But I have a long history of being scared of poison.” 

“Growing up must've been tough,” a girl says whose face reminds him of something. He stares at her long enough for eye contact to be awkward but he knows her. He knows her from - she has been the one who snuck onto the ship with Finn. She has watched Phasma die. She… 

… smiles at him like she has no idea who he is. 

“It was,” Armitage answers. His cheeks burn and his throat pickles as he picks up a piece of his pancake and tries it. It’s good, especially when dipped in that syrup. It’s not like he can taste the _love_ that Poe was talking about, and the food is far from perfect, but it tastes like something he could get used to. Better than anything the First Order had on a bad day, that’s for sure. 

“Then I'm glad that you're here,” Rose says and carefully leans closer to him. 

“And I'm sorry for what happened.”

Armitage just nods and eats his breakfast, but he notices that some of the weight in his chest has disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've come to the conclusion that this fanfiction is just a summary of everyone that should be pissed at Armitage but then sees that he's actually a gay mess, so they can't really be angry. Thank you.


	4. Chapter 4

Something about the droid confuses him. It has snuck into the bathroom and made a few attempts at communicating with the mouse droid, just to give up on that and to drive in circles around Armitage. 

“Hair?” it asks when he pulls out the can of dye and rolls it in his hands to weight it. 

“Yes,” he says without thinking about it, “Because I don't like to see his face in the mirror- why am I talking to a droid?” 

“You're going insane,” Poe says from the kitchen. Armitage has started three attempts to make him leave but none of those had worked. 

_ You're having a mental breakdown in the middle of the night and dye your hair, Hugs, I'm not going to leave you alone. _

What Poe does not know is that Armitage has had his fair share of mental breakdowns and this isn't one of them. He has considered doing this but it's hard to admit that you want to dye your hair after you saw your arch-enemy purchasing black dye. And that had been the day Armitage had wondered if the hair was Ben's natural color or if he did something to it. He knew that the man owned nail polish and that he had used it on his belt. And, sometimes, nails. 

“Don't you have somewhere to be?” Armitage asks him again, opens the can and pokes his fingers into it. 

“Did you put on gloves?” 

Armitage pulls his finger away like he burnt himself. 

“That's a no, then,” Poe mutters. 

“Do I need gloves?” 

“Do you want black fingers for about a week?” 

“No, obviously,” Armitage hisses and almost drops the can when he hears the other man's sigh. Poe's head shows up in the doorframe and he throws a pair of leather gloves at him. 

“Those are mine,” Armitage forces himself to say even though memories try to overwhelm him. He has done so much with his hands hidden inside those gloves. 

“Are you gonna use them for anything else? I don't think so.”

And because Poe is right, he puts them on. The man watches him while he carefully spreads the dye on his hair. The droid continues its circles, telling them, “black hair”. 

“Exactly,” Armitage says quietly and looks at Poe. “Did I miss a spot?” 

The pilot leans closer to him, squints and reaches into the can. Armitage watches him as he takes out a handful of dye and puts it onto the hair on the side of his face. 

“What was that with the black fingers?” Armitage asks to get over the feeling of fingers touching his skin. His face tickles but he doesn't dare to scratch it. 

“It will look so cool on me,” Poe means with a shrug.

And he reminds him so much of Ben, Ben in his stupid times, that he has to look away. He wants to say that Poe doesn't have to be nice for the sake of it, that Armitage doesn't believe in a republic, seriously, there has to be order or else the galaxy repeats its mistakes, but what he gets out is, “You're stupid.”

“I'm your general,” Poe says. 

That's so odd that Armitage grins at him and shakes his head in defeat. They wait fifteen minutes until they wash out the dye. What has been a clean bathroom so far turns into a stained mess within seconds but none of the two cares. Armitage cleans up as good as he can, but that's only because he's avoiding the mirror. 

Only when Poe pushes him towards it, he takes a look at himself and - bloody hell, it's terrible. He blinks a few times but this doesn't go away. At least there's no resemblance to Brendol Hux anymore, he thinks, as he slowly forces his eyes away from his reflection and looks over to Poe. 

“Uh,” the man says. “Do you have a limit? How mean am I allowed to be?” 

This is a question from spy-days. Poe has made quite a few jokes that made Armitage shut up and tremble, so from then on there had always been the “How far can I go?” question. 

“Do your worst,” Armitage says. 

Poe raises an eyebrow, smirks and pushes away a streak of black hair out of Armitage's face. He decides not to mind this. 

“Do First Order people have an emo phase? Because if not, congrats, you just reached it.”

“Ouch,” Armitage mutters but guesses that this is not the worst Poe can do. 

“You can never wear black ever again because people will think that you're a slightly better looking version of Kylo Ren.”

“Slightly better looking?” Armitage asks him, “You're still being really nice to me. This is the worst thing I have ever witnessed in my life. I've watched a holonet show about the worst hairstyles of the decade and none of them come remotely close to what I've done to myself. If I were to decide my fate, I'd execute myself for this.”

Poe looks… impressed. The silence stretches for a few seconds, then Armitage starts laughing. 

He leans against the bathtub and laughs, and it's no drunk laugh and no anxious laugh, it's just him giggling about how disastrous his hair looks. Poe touches his shoulder so he doesn't fall. He's also laughing hysterically, his face is so warm and happy that Armitage is afraid this is all a dream. 

He forgets about his pain and the ugly scar and Ben's death. 

What matters is how stupid he feels, in a way that he's not going to get punished for. 

\---

Chewbacca is taller than he remembers him; a beast - no  _ Wookie _ \- with little motivation to keep Armitage in one piece. He hasn't reacted much to his presence, other than a small growl when he entered the ship. 

He has volunteered to do this, so he doesn't get in contact with anyone else. He hasn't talked to many people yet after the hair disaster. Finn has offered to bleach it and then find an orange color that matches his old one - and while that has been very nice of him, Armitage has decided not to take that offer. 

Mostly because whenever Poe sees him, his face breaks out into a huge grin. Rey has gotten better at hiding it but Poe is still unable to stop smiling. And the resistance seems to like his jokes, as long as they don't get self-deprecating. Rose has hit him with a tablet when he mentioned how much he hated himself, so he’s avoiding that kind of humor. 

Chewbacca stays… quiet about it. Armitage wonders if he's capable of holding grudges or forgiveness. He hasn't really done research on that species, mostly because the Empire had done a good job at ruining the Wookies' planet. Armitage has never seen Kashyyyk at a point where it was worth the visit, which makes it uninteresting to him. 

He feels it coming before Chewbacca hits him with a screwdriver. He flinches away from him, stares at him and tries to remember that this is different, this will never be his father and he will never suffer from this again. 

“Sorry, I got distracted,” he says and continues to work on the wiring. He's gotten better at it but he has yet to find something he's good at. No, not good,  _ talented _ . Brendol loved to mention that Armitage didn't have any talents. Whatever he did, he was bad at it until he put effort into it. He has forced himself to study languages, to repair things, to write speeches. The one thing he keeps away from, is cooking. 

He sits down on the floor and drops the tool he's holding. The ship is the oldest one he has ever seen in his life. It seems impossible to repair it and, really, he couldn't have found a worse way to try to be useful. Chewbacca roars at him, which makes Armitage's hair fall into his face. He shakes his head, offers a, “Not today” and rests his head on his knees. 

He's tired, in a way he faintly recognizes from the few weeks without Phasma. Unlike back then, he doesn't feel scared to admit it. Maybe because he knows that hiding it will ultimately lead him to a breakdown. 

Armitage doesn't realize he's crying until Rey's sitting next to him and talking to him. He moves to the side, leans against her and buries his face in her shoulder. He hasn't cried about so many things yet, things that haunt him now and block out every rational thought. He feels useless and stupid and he doesn't want to be alive (and he also doesn't want be  _ dead _ ; what he really wants is the world to stop for a moment). 

“I can't stay,” is the first thing that crosses his mind. He says it, chokes on it, then he repeats it. 

“And I can't fix this ship,” he adds. 

He hears a tiny sigh that reminds him of Phasma but unlike Phasma, Rey doesn't say out loud what's bothering her. 

“Luke used to tell me about Yoda's famous  _ Do or do not, there is no try  _ thing,” the girl starts. Armitage lifts his head and moves away from her so he can look her in the eyes. 

“The thing is,” Rey continues, “He's wrong. If you try something, you're already doing it.”

“Clearly, I'm failing.”

Armitage has no idea who Yoda is. He also has a certain idea of how insane Luke must've been. He trusts Rey, but that doesn't mean he has to trust every Jedi he meets. 

“I don’t think you are. Chewie says you’re doing a good job.”

That’s obviously not what he has said because the Wookie lets out a tiny, angry growl. Rey laughs at it and shakes her head.    
“No, I’m sure you two did a good job.”

She looks at Armitage for a few seconds, frowns slightly and tilts her head. 

“I don’t want to force you to stay.”

And maybe he should stay. Maybe he can’t pick himself up from the floor on his own. Maybe he needs Poe to remind him to do basic tasks like drinking water. He likes being around the resistance because nobody hates him even though they should. Armitage gets up and looks around. 

“I need to return the stolen ship,” he says, more to himself, “And I can’t… I don’t want to be part of this.”

Rey doesn’t ask him what he doesn’t want to be part of. Chances are that she knows, via the Force or by just paying attention to him. Armitage wonders if she thinks that she knows him. Truth is, nobody can know him. He was whatever he needed to be to get the power he needed to survive. Now, he’s the scar on his chest and stains of black hair dye on his ears. 

For some reason, it’s enough for him. 

\---

Goodbye wasn’t as hard as Armitage expected it to be - but solitude is harder to manage after weeks of listening to the resistance laughing and screaming and setting grills on fire. He plays a game of chess once he entered hyperspace but this only keeps him busy for an hour. The holonet seems overly dramatic and bland at the same time, so he opens a cupboard he hasn’t looked at before. It’s full of books. 

Actual books, no digital copies. Armitage isn’t stupid, he knows that it’s easier to control a population when the media is censored. The books in his hands don’t seem to be altered to fit a certain ideology. They simply exist. 

Armitage sits down, pulls a blanket up to his chin and starts reading. He only gets up to get a drink and dinner but then he hides on the couch again and turns page after page. It takes him a while to feel something but once he’s invested into the novel, he can’t stop reading. When the ship exits the hyperspace, he keeps it floating in space for a while because he can’t bear the thought of leaving an unfinished book behind. When he finally finishes it and sends a request to land, he looks around the ship to become aware of his surroundings again. He hasn’t read anything like this in the First Order. He disappeared for a few hours and came back, changed, somehow. He presses his face against the pages and inhales the smell of the book, so he doesn’t forget about this feeling. 

There aren’t any complications during the landing and the ship doesn’t seem to be marked as stolen either. He finds the same spot where he stole it from, parks and collects his few belongings. It’s a little more than he first entered the ship with but he uses one of Poe’s bags to store everything. The mouse droid circles the chess table as he walks to the door. 

“Come with me,” Armitage says. “This isn’t our ship.”

The droid beeps quietly, sadly maybe, and rushes to his feet. Armitage stares at the door for longer than he wants to, then he pushes the button to open it and steps outside. 

There’s a person waiting in front of it. They’re unmistakably there for him, which becomes obvious when they happily wave at him when he exits. Armitage resists the urge to look behind him. There’s nobody they could wave at. Besides, their physique fits the clothes in the ship and the size of the bed. 

“I was hoping you’d come back,” they say. They have a deeper voice than Armitage expected. They’re fairly small, have dark skin and a voluminous cloud of hair framing their head. 

He has no idea what to say. 

“Come back?” he repeats. 

“I had a couple of errands to run on this planet and I really hoped you’d bring the ship back before I had to leave. You’re right on time, I only missed a birthday party yesterday.”

With every word they say, he gets more confused. They continue to smile at him and look him right in the eye. Something about them isn’t human, in the same way Ben felt off when using the Force. But unlike Ben who channeled the Force, they seem to be made out of this power. If Armitage didn’t know any better (which he, in fact, doesn’t), he’d say that this person is the Force as a… human. Or at least very human looking. 

“Are you real?” he hears himself ask.

“Sorry?” they ask back. 

“I- I stole your ship. I… you couldn’t have possibly known that I was coming back. I didn’t even know that I was coming back.”

His puts his weight onto the healthy leg, looks down on his droid and then finally back into their eyes. 

“You looked like you needed a ship,” they say. 

“You  _ saw  _ me?”

“I didn’t need the ship, so…”

“So you let me steal it?” Armitage finishes their sentence and stares at them in disbelief. “I don’t believe you.”

For the first time, an honest emotion crosses their face. They don’t seem angry but at least distressed. 

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Sir,” they say. “But, if you don’t mind, I really need to visit my girlfriend now and apologize for not being there.”

A headache starts to spread from the back of Armitage’s head, all the way over to his eyes. He feels dizzy, like someone has just stopped his lungs from working. The rational part of his brain knows that this is guilt but it feels like he’s dying and he’d seriously rather die than experiencing it ever again. If he ever feels guilt over blowing up three planets, his heart will probably explode. Then again, this is personal. He can see the pain in the eyes of a stranger. 

“You couldn’t visit your girlfriend because I stole your ship?” he asks. 

They nod. 

Armitage can’t breathe. He wants them to hate him so badly. He has done something bad and he hasn’t even apologized - yet there they are, walking to the entrance of their ship like Armitage just borrowed it for a weekend-trip. 

“I ordered you a shuttle,” they say before the door closes behind them. “Good luck with everything.”

Armitage whispers, “Thank you” and hopes that they hear it. The second their ship is gone, he turns around and walks towards the shuttle they mentioned. He sits down next to the driver, puts his bag between his knees and struggles to breathe. He’s alone. Not only that, he’s lost. 

“Is there a Cantina nearby?” he asks the driver. 

“There is no alcohol on this planet.”

“Any cafes, then?”

“There is no caf either.”

That explains the fact that he didn’t find any of it in the ship. Still, it doesn’t help him now. 

“I can drop you off at a teahouse, is that alright?”

_ No _ , Armitage wants to answer but he nods and presses his bag to his chest. He can’t get over the piercing brown eyes of the person that he just met. Kindness is a trait rarely rewarded in the First Order, so he never learnt to respond to it. 

He thanks the driver after getting off. The man refuses his money and shakes his head when Armitage insists. 

“You look like you could need some kindness right now, boy,” he says. Armitage stares at him, inhales and slowly exhales the air again. 

“Thank you,” he says. “But I don’t deserve it.”

“Let me decide that,” the man says. He has the same certainty in his voice Rae had when she realized that something about the way Brendol treated him wasn’t alright. 

Armitage doesn’t have the energy to disagree. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very insecure about this chapter but I wanted to post before my vacation. Let's hope that I can still post there but I also want to spend some time with my family and do university work.  
> That being said, (late) Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays!  
> \- Ben


	5. Chapter 5

“What I heard…” the human next to him says, “Is that there was a spy.”

“Where did you hear that?” 

“That Rey Skywalker girl, she told me.”

“No way she spoke with you.” 

Armitage moves a few centimeters away without looking suspicious. He has his hands wrapped around his mug and tries not to look at the men next to him. He hasn't tried to drink his tea yet because there are tiny black pearls at the bottom of his the cup and he doesn't trust them. To be fair, he hasn't read the menu when he ordered, he has simply asked for the most ordered drink. 

The result of that rests between his hands. He has asked for it to be cold but he didn't want ice, so the milky tea slowly warms up with every passing second. 

“It's true, she stepped by on Tatooine and I met her,” the human continues. The tea in front of him is almost empty but he keeps a little rest at the bottom. 

“And she talked to you about a spy in the First Order,” his companion mutters. Unlike the human, he has finished his tea and keeps his elbows rested on the table. He looks at his friend like he would sell his soul for as much as a free caf. He's a beige colored Twi'lek but this isn't the first time Armitage meets one of those. The only odd thing about him is that he's smaller and slimmer than the other male Twi'leks that Armitage has met. Then again, who is he to judge? 

“Yeah! I'm telling you, she said that I shouldn't thank her. It was the spy that made them vulnerable.”

“That's what spies do,” the Twi'lek says. 

There's a pause. Armitage stirs his tea with the glass straw and takes a careful sip. Three of the pearls shoot up into his mouth and get stuck in his throat. He starts coughing which catches the two men's attention. 

“Ey, buddy, first time?” the human asks. When he's not talking about Armitage behind his back (which he can't know, so it's fine), his voice is a little quieter and softer. 

Armitage nods and moves his chair a little closer to the men. 

“You gotta drink slowly, then you won't choke on it,” the human says and grins. “But I like to say that we're here for a good time, not a long time.” 

“What my husband is _trying_ to say is that he almost died during his first time,” the Twi'lek says. 

Husband. It's a warm word hearing it from another man. To be honest, it's almost therapeutic for Armitage. After all, he hasn't been sure that anyone like him existed. Phasma had been the first comfort after a long time. 

“No, I'm trying to tell you about the spy, Tear.”

“Well, Joos, maybe the gentleman over here wants to hear it.”

Joos finally finishes his tea and clears his throat. 

“I'm just saying, it must be really wild being a spy. I wonder why they did it.”

Something in Armitage's heart breaks like a glow-stick and starts spreading inside his chest. He looks down on the tea, stirs again and says, slowly, “Maybe they didn't want to be guilty. Maybe they rather wanted to be dead than to survive in a system like this.” 

“That's oddly specific, buddy,” Tear comments. 

Armitage feels trapped. 

“I'm the spy,” he says. It's different than saying it for the first time. It's not as fun, it's not as dangerous. It's something in between but it leaves his mouth more easily, that's for sure. 

Joos looks like he just got shot in the chest. 

“Wait, really? You look…” He squints and looks over to his husband. Tear groans like he expected to be forced to finish that sentence but isn't quite ready for it. 

“Truth to be told, I wasn't fully on board until I got shot for it. I knew it was a good decision, then,” Armitage says. It feels good to tell this to others. It's a living proof that he really exists outside of the man be has become with the First Order. 

“Better than the other way around,” Joos mutters. 

Armitage grins. 

“Right.”

“So, do you have a name?” Tear asks. Even though this had to happen at some point, Armitage is not prepared for the question. He swallows hard, takes a careful sip of the tea and shakes his head. 

“This is something I wouldn't want to say, for my own safety.”

“You're obviously not Kylo Ren. It's not like we're going to murder you.” Joos puts a hand on his husband's shoulder and giggles quietly. “Or that ginger general, what was his name? He sounded so angry during that speech, didn't we watch that together, Tear? Didn't I say that the stormtroopers should have windshield-wipers?” 

“Hux,” Armitage says. “That's precisely who I am.” 

The two men exchange a look but Tear doesn't skip a beat. He sighs, turns to Armitage and says, “Well, I don't know if anyone ever told you this but you spit when you yell.” 

“I'm aware, thank you.”

He finishes the tea while the other two order new ones. Maybe this is a nicer space than a cantina but Armitage isn't sure if tea is a great substitute for alcohol. He feels nervous and full of energy after only one cup and he knows that a second won't let him sleep at night. 

“Okay, question,” Joos asks when he sits down again. This time, he has ordered a tea without pearls which is probably for the best. 

“Question,” Armitage repeats because he's good at doing that. 

“Why did you join them in the first place?” 

“Joos, you can't just ask people why they joined the First Order.”

“I just did.”

Armitage bites his lip and looks at the wall behind the two men. The place has nice colors, a light red and alien lettering everywhere. To him it doesn't matter how he joined the Order, it's more important how he could ever leave it. When did the one thing he believed in get this unimportant to him?

“Bad question?” Joos asks and gets promptly smacked into his head by his husband. Armitage's lips form something close to a smile. 

“Yes. Sorry,” he says. 

“He's never seen a First Order general in the wild. He's curious,” Tear says. 

“As if you've seen one.” 

“I didn't say that.” 

“You obviously implied it.” 

“Do you see me asking any stupid questions?” Tear hisses. 

“You asked for his _name_.” 

“I couldn't have known that he's fucking General Hux, couldn't I?” 

Armitage clears his throat. The two men look at him like he interrupted the most important conversation of their lives. One day, Poe and Finn will grow up to be like them, Armitage is sure of it. 

“You mentioned Tatooine?"

“I'm from there, actually,” Joos sexplains. “Grew up on there. Terrible planet. On my first day off, I met Tear and that settled it for me.”

“It's a hellhole, really,” Tear agrees. “But he visits his parents sometimes. They hate me. Not because I'm a man but because I'm not human.” 

“They're like that on Tatooine,” Joos says. 

Armitage has grown up in a fairly xenophobic family, so he gets that. While he's not from Jakku, he has spent a lot of time on there, so he gets the issues with Tatooine's climate. 

“You don't really want to go there, don't you? Buddy, there are better planets out there. They're trying to re-populate Coruscant, maybe you could go there?” 

Armitage usually doesn't like other people's advice. He's worked hard not to listen to those beneath him. But, one, those men aren't beneath him. Two, Tatooine had been a stupid idea in the first place. 

“I could do that,” he says. 

“But you don't have a ship? Wait, you're not the guy who borrowed that little sunshine's one, right?” 

Armitage blinks, smiles and wonders when those terrible moments will ever stop. Joos laughs, a sharp, hysterical laugh. 

“Your _face_. Don't worry, we'll find a transport for you. After all, you basically won the war for us, didn't you?” 

This is worse than anything he has done in the Order. This is worse than Kylo, worse than Phasma's curses and worse than the look on Pryde's face right before he shot him. This is how friends behave and Armitage has no idea how to handle that. 

They switch topics after that, and Armitage finds himself trapped in a conversation about interior design. What he knows is that he never wants the blinding white of Ben's quarters or the depressing darkness of the control rooms again. He has started to like green. Tear agrees with him, although he can't tell if it's because he likes green too or because he wants to disagree with his husband. 

Maybe it's a bit of both. Armitage isn't jealous of the two, that would require bitterness and he's not bitter about what they have. He's sad that he never had it and chances are that he will never have it. He's not considerably younger than the two men but they already are married, they met each other's parents and joke around like they've known each other for ages. 

The only person Armitage could imagine this with was Ben. And Ben died protecting the woman he had a _bond_ with. It's not fair to think this. Rey might be one of the most incredible women he has met so far. She isn't as soft as people want her to be, but she has always comforted him. 

Tear pays for their tea while Armitage fidgets with the edge of his pullover. He doesn't want to ask and apparently he doesn't have to because the two men have already decided to walk him to the closest hostel. 

“We keep in touch, hero,” Joos tells him. 

“I should give you my number for that,” Armitage says. He gets out his comm but stops mid-way. This is the comm he used at the Order. This shouldn't be the one he uses for friends. 

He pulls out the comm that Ben had given him years ago. They had exchanged it during Empire Day. Of course, it hadn't been officially celebrated anymore but Armitage had grown up doing so. While he kept his presents simple and impersonal, Ben hadn't even made the effort to gift him something. Just one time. 

_Don't use it, ever_ , he had said. 

_Why would you give it to me, then?_ Armitage had asked. 

_Because I don't want you to be in a situation where you'd have to call me._

Armitage hadn't used the comm when he betrayed the First Order. He hadn't used it when he woke up on the ground, when he carried himself to a TIE fighter and escaped. He never used it because he knew that he had stopped being part of Ben's story the second the laser pierced his chest. 

He isn't part of his story now, either. 

That's why he exchanges the frequency with his new friends, watches them leave and catches himself smiling. 

\---

He has a roommate, at least according to the bags on the bed next to Armitage's one. He puts down his own bag and sits down, and then he realizes that he has no idea how to pass time. He looks at the walls, down on his legs, then at the belongings of the stranger he shares a room with. 

What would he do if the Order still existed? He'd probably work or kill people (although this counted as work time) or spend the day babysitting Ben. He always complained about it but truth is, he misses Ben so much that it hurts. His two only friends are dead and they left a hole in his chest he can never fill again. 

He stays like this for maybe an hour, then the door opens and his roommate steps into the room. The face is familiar but Armitage has to dig through a couple of mental drawers before he can find a name. 

Before he can say anything, the stranger smiles at him and says, “So, wonders _really_ never cease, huh?” 

DJ. Don't Join. It's the stupidest name Armitage has ever looked up on his datapad to find out who he is. Some of the information is still stored in the back of his memory. 

“I was about to say the same,” he says. 

When DJ smiles, a chill creeps up Armitage's back. The resistance has been nice to him because they thought he was on their side. But he isn't, not really. Moral alignment wise he's probably closest to DJ's smug grin as the man sits down on his bed and considers him. 

“Your money isn't good use now but I guess that's the least of your concerns now, _General_ ,” the thief says and raises an eyebrow when Armitage presses his bag closer to his chest. 

“I would've told you to spend it quickly but one of your friends bit me. I had to disinfect that.” 

“Friends,” DJ repeats. “Speaking of, where's your friend? Tall, shiny armor, slightly sadistic…” 

“She's dead.” 

“Oh, what a shame.” 

Something tells Armitage that DJ knew it already. He had announced it, the same way he had announced his father's death. But unlike when he told the world that Brendol passed away, his voice had shaken and he had felt nothing but anger. He's still feeling it, although it has grown into something colder. 

“Are you scared that I'm going to steal something? You have that look.” 

Armitage clears his throat and mutters, “It's the anxiety” which makes the man howl with laughter. Armitage frowns and leans back on the bed until he reaches the wall. 

“Seriously, you look really, really done. I like the green, though.”

“People say that,” Armitage says and wonders why he's blushing. 

“And you listen to them?” 

That's a good point but Armitage doesn't feel ready to explore it. He looks at his droid that has followed him all the way from the tea house to the hostel and now to his room. It doesn't seem to trust DJ, which makes Armitage proud. 

“How did she die?” the man asks. 

“What?” 

“Shiny armor girl. How did she die?” 

“I don't know,” Armitage hisses even though he does know. Well, at least how knows how it must've happened. “I assume she went down with the ship after being attacked by the resistance.” 

“She _w-w-w-w-went down_ ,” DJ repeats with a smile on his face that could shame the stars for existing. Armitage has the strong urge to punch him. 

“Yes,” he says coldly. 

“In that armor? Com'on, honey, no way in hell she just died after that. I bet on the droid that she's still alive.” 

“Leave my droid out of this.” 

But DJ's words have called back a monster that had nested in Armitage's brain for a few weeks after her death. Denial. The nest still exists somewhere, so the creature sits down comfortably and continues whispering, “She's not gone”. 

“Why are you saying this?” Armitage asks because the other man stays silent. He can't make out any motivation behind this, no personal gain or amusement. DJ takes a deep breath like this is the most exhausting conversation he had in a long time. 

“You gave her that smile. That's why.”

“We're not…” Armitage starts. 

DJ grins again. 

“Of course not. But no matter if you find her somewhere or you spend all your days searching, it's a fun way to spend a life, isn't it?” 

“No, not at all.” 

_How did he_ smile _at her?_ He can't remember anything. Two years are a long time to spend without pictures of someone. Ben will disappear this way too, like the baby blue couch Armitage loved to sit on or Rae's eye rolls. His brain isn't designed to keep things. 

When the thoughts overwhelm him, he grabs the droid and puts it down on the bed next to him. He can't pet a droid but it somehow knows what he needs because it stops next to his knee and hums quietly. 

“That's not a cat,” DJ tells him. 

“Thank you, I wouldn't have noticed.”

They pause, an awkward but necessary pause. Armitage puts a hand on the droid, just to feel the warmth. 

“What are you planning to do now?” he asks. 

DJ rolls his eyes. 

“Waiting for the next empire and then it's the same work as usual. It's fun.”

Armitage knows how loneliness feels like but he has never been alone for long. DJ has no side, apart from his own, and he would sell everyone's soul to get something for him. 

“I wouldn't sleep if I were you. I mean, I promised not to steal anything but your droid is really adorable,” DJ mutters as he crawls under his blanket. “I'm still thinking about it.” 

So, a sleepless night it is, Armitage thinks as he continues petting the droid that isn't a cat. It's fine. He has time to look at the stars, to just look and let thoughts be nothing but thoughts that cross his mind and fly away again. 

Once the sunlight floats the room and DJ slightly moves under his sheets, Armitage already got up and kicks the droid towards the door. He turns around and allows himself one last look at the man. The note with his holo-frequency is tucked underneath DJ's coat, so he will find it eventually. Or not. 

Armitage doesn't really care for it but he likes to have the possibility. They won't be friends, he doesn't think they can do that. Maybe they can be that odd thing between friends and enemies. 

\---

“He's gonna miss it!” 

Tear's hushed voice wakes him up. Armitage needs a few seconds to understand where he is. He remembers walking out of the hostel after he payed, meeting his new friends and then sitting down on the seat Tear offered him. He hasn't slept well in a long time but he recognizes this nap as a rather good one. 

“I'm going to miss what?” he asks, voice still sleepy and weak. He blinks and rubs his eyes but this doesn't improve his vision yet. He's on a ship, that's about all he sees because he's being blinded by a sea of bright dots. He blinks again. 

The dots are lights, city lights. 

“You woke him up, idiot,” Joos mutters. 

Armitage lowers his eyes and sees that the two men are holding hands. The Twi'lek has his lekku crossed behind his head and smiles when he notices Armitage looking at him. 

“And that's Coruscant.”

“It's pretty,” Armitage says because that's the only thing he can think of right now. Words aren't quite here yet, he is still blinded by the light and the overwhelming feeling that this is where he should be. Coruscant is large enough to disappear in. 

“Do you like it?” 

He doesn't feel capable of saying anything, so he just nods and leans closer to the windshield. He doesn't dare to touch it, so his finger hovers a few millimeters away from it and traces the lights of the planet-sized city. 

“Alright, while you two were asleep I read into it,” Tear says and glares at his husband. “Even though _someone_ promised to help me with it.”

“You could've, like, woken me up.” 

“Unrealistic. They're looking for people to live in the middle class levels, and there's no rent, apparently, as long as you keep the flat in order and promote the planet a little.” 

“That's convenient,” Joos says. 

“Right, it is. I sent you a few apartments, Armitage, just pick one and I'll drop you off.”

Armitage wonders if he likes being called that name but nods and opens the file on his watch. He clicks himself through a couple of flats but decides to take the first one he looked at. 

“I prefer that one too but I didn't want to decide for you,” Tear says as he heads for a parking space. “I can't believe we're going to have another republic in my lifetime.” 

“I didn't think we'd ever come this far,” Armitage hears himself say. “It's going to be a disaster.” 

“Oh, for sure,” Joos says. “But you will be right here to watch it happen. Can we get a drink before we leave? I'm starting to miss it.” 

“No,” Tear says and stresses the word enough for Joos not to ask again. “But, Armitage?” 

“Yes?”

“Keep in touch, alright?” 

“Send pictures of the apartment,” Joos orders. 

Armitage nods to both because he isn't sure if they accept a “No”. It's not the worst order he has ever gotten. He's looking forward to it. 

Still strangely happy, he turns away and walks towards the flat. His steps are lighter now and he almost is able to ignore the pain in his leg. His world only comes to a crashing halt when he spots a woman in front of the door. 

And even though he has never seen her face, he knows who she is. 

Armitage can't move. The woman walks closer to him, smiles and runs her fingers through her short blonde hair. His eyes burn with tears and he doesn't dare to say anything. The silence stretches like a safe bubble around his head until it bursts with her words. 

“General Hux,” Captain Phasma says. “Long time no see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me a while... But I finally made it. Today is my second time seeing TROS and I hope it won't kill me.


	6. Chapter 6

The next thing he feels is that he is hugging her. He wraps his fragile arms around her and just holds on because he's scared of losing her again. Tears stream down his cheeks, happy tears, because he doesn't care that this isn't real. He wants to stay in this dream forever. 

“You didn't actually think I was dead?” she asks, calm as usual. She doesn't properly hug him back, there's just one awkward hand on his back. She's even smaller without the uniform, a soft and pretty woman that is definitely more huggable when she isn't wearing a helmet. 

He doesn't answer. He isn't sure if he can ever speak again. Part of him feels whole again but everything else has shut down. 

“Armitage, look at me,” she suddenly orders and Armitage steps away to stare into her eyes. They are a calm blue, exactly how he imagined the sea to be as a child. 

“You died,” he says. “Ben died. _I_ almost died. How could I know…”

“You're not an idiot, aren't you?” 

Despite her harsh words, her eyes scan Armitage and look for the near-death-experience he mentioned. There it is, the silent worry that he missed for those two years without her. She's going to complain about his sleeping or eating habits in her own way, he's sure of it. 

Once she is done examining him, she smiles a little. He already knows that he will never get over this smile because it's so different from the blank helmet he's used to. 

“Took you long enough to find me,” Phasma says. 

“I wasn't even looking. I had no idea that you were going to appear.” 

Her eyes get darker, just for a second, and she opens her mouth like she is about to say something. Then she stops herself, frowns and looks at a point behind Armitage. 

“Kylo Ren is dead?” she asks. 

“Why do you ask?” Armitage asks back, while part of him already knows. Part of him knows her words before she says them because they creep into his head like a spider. His friend looks at him for a few more seconds, then shakes her head. 

“Do you want to see my cat?” 

“I do want to see your cat,” Armitage answers before he can think about it. Why does _she_ have a cat? What has she done in the last years that made her into a person that owns a cat? She has always shut down every attempt Ben made to get Armitage a pet. He had hoped that Armitage, once occupied with taking care of an animal, would no longer stand in his way. Phasma has picked up approximately five cats from Armitage's doorstep and dropped them off on planets where someone could care for them. 

It's not like she hates cats, she probably doesn't. Cats just don't match the cold armor and professionalism. 

Maybe cats match her smile, who knows? 

“What have you been up to?” Armitage asks as he steps into the living space, followed by Phasma's steps which are a lot quieter without a suit of armor. 

“I visited Naboo, some really odd place names Earth… my girlfriend's from there, but I never really-” 

Armitage frowns, stops and flinches when she walks into him. 

“Girlfriend.” 

“Yes.” 

“You.” 

Phasma puts her hands on his shoulders which is so familiar yet a memory buried deep in his head. He almost melts into it until she pushes him forward. 

“What part of it exactly surprises you?” she asks as she pushes him down on a sofa (not baby blue but close to). 

“You fake your death, never tell me, then resurface with a _cat_ and a _girlfriend_.” 

“Yes,” Phasma says. 

Armitage gives up making sense out of that. He watches his droid driving in circles around his friend's feet. For some reason he doesn't understand yet, it has missed Phasma. Phasma, the person who got an alert from the droid whenever Hux was hurt. Ever since she died, those alarms had stopped (or did they? Maybe Phasma had known exactly how many times he had broken down because he didn't allow himself to stop working) and Armitage considers keeping it that way. 

When he looks up again, Phasma carries a small, orange cat and places it on Armitage's lap. 

“Millicent,” he whispers because there's no way in hell she didn't name her that. Phasma is the only person alive who knows that he wanted to call a cat that name. It's an elegant name that fits to the creature on his legs that curls up to a ball and rubs its face against his knees. He feels tears in his eyes but the feeling they carry isn't bad. 

He presses his face into Millicent's soft fur. 

“So, how's she like?” he asks, muffled but still audible. 

“She's the most beautiful woman in the galaxy,” Phasma says, and it sounds like Poe talking about Finn or Rey talking about the man she believed Ben could be. Love. 

“I think that's you,” Armitage says and looks up to see if it made her blush. Phasma glares at him with what's possibly the most deadly stare he has ever seen. 

“She is the kindest person I know, that's for sure. She just lets people steal her ship and hopes that they come back. I was pretty sure she'd never get it back after that one ginger-” 

Armitage finds it difficult to breathe. 

“... stole it. But he brought it back.”

“Wonderful,” Armitage says in his calmest voice. Maybe it's not as calm as he thinks, maybe it's how he said “No Sir, good job” but then again, Phasma wasn't present when that happened and she doesn't know of his worst humiliation. 

He looks at the cat and wonders how he went wrong. Or right. 

“It was then that I knew you live,” Phasma says. “I heard of First Order Star Destroyers being shot down by a resistance fleet and I hoped you were smart enough to be on the right side of the trigger.” 

“I wasn't there,” he admits. “I was in that ship.” 

“Of course you were.”

Phasma smiles. Armitage smiles back. 

There's not much they do afterwards; he pets Millicent, she prepares dinner and curses about twenty-seven times. Every time, something that would've put Ben's tantrums to shame echoes through the apartment, Armitage has to hide his grin. 

They eat in silence, then Phasma takes a shower to “get ready” for a date. She offers him to join but Armitage has joined enough people over the last few weeks to appreciate some silence. In fact, now that she's here and he can look forward to his old safety and trust, loneliness is a feeling that has been deleted from his vocabulary. 

Besides, he would rather die than meeting her girlfriend. 

Once Phasma is gone he has time to roam through the apartment, take pictures and send them to his friends. He sends Poe a video message of Millicent but as he receives no immediate response, he puts the comm down and walks towards the bathroom. Phasma is a clean person. She has always been, that's what they both had liked about each other. They'd never trash a room the way Ben did and even on their worst days they took care of each other and the spaces around them. Phasma wouldn't allow him to hide in a cluttered room. 

And since they don't have many belongings either, Armitage finds two towels, a couple of cleaning supplies and a hairbrush in the bathroom, that's all. He puts down his replacement clothes, closes the door so Millicent won't enter while he showers, and gets ready. 

The apartment is more luxurious than any First Order ship he has been in but it's also old. Armitage gives up understanding how to set the temperature up, hopes for the best and turns on the water. 

It's a mistake. 

Apparently, Phasma enjoys bathing in lava because what hits his shoulders and his injured chest is so hot that Armitage can't stop himself from screaming. The fire is everywhere but most importantly, it fills up his brain and then spreads through his body. Armitage jumps to the side, breathing heavily and repeating every curse he has ever heard from Phasma. The water burns his hand as he fumbles for the console to turn it off. Once he's met with silence, he sits down and tries to catch his breath. 

How quickly does the human body forget pain? It hasn't even been two months and yet it's like he's experiencing this for the first time. Armitage carefully touches his chest and hisses when his finger sets off another wave of pain. He's crying but barely noticing it. 

He has done this a million times. Whenever he finds himself on the ground, he gets up. He got up and survived Brendol. He survived the First Order. He survived Pryde. 

And now he's going to survive this. 

He crawls out of the shower, shaking with pain and dizziness. He grabs his clothes and puts them on; every single of his movements is automatically and he doesn't remember doing it. 

He's alone. There's nobody to help him. His vision goes black, slowly, like something is devouring colors and everything around him. Armitage feels his knees go weak and the floor welcomes him like an old friend. 

_Sometimes, pain is so bad that it's every single part of you. You're nothing but that pain. It consumes you, your thoughts, your feelings, your vision. You can't think about anything else than how much it burns and how the flames spread in your stomach. The leg is irrelevant. The resistance is irrelevant. Nothing else matters but the leak in his chest that is growing with every second they carry him away._

_The bulletproof vest apparently does not care for lasers._

_Armitage can't breathe. His eyes are closed and waves of pain echo through his body whenever they move him around like a puppet. His feet hit a door frame and everything goes black for several seconds._

_They will throw him out into space. He knows how this works. Sometimes the victims have the luck of being already dead before the vacuum of space sucks the air from their lungs and swallows them whole._

_But they don't throw him out. Someone puts him down, almost gently, there's a voice, “Survive this” -_ Mitaka? _\- and then the world around him fades as he's catapulted into the depths of the galaxy. Stars pass him and he's not sure where the escape capsule is headed._

_It's not like he can think, anyway. Everything burns. Blood is pouring out if him like he's an insignificant leak somewhere in the control room. He's died and this is what hell feels like. Obviously, he's going to hell for the lives he's destroyed._

_He's dying and he never had a chance to live._

Survive this. 

_Armitage closes his eyes and thinks that this is the one order he can't follow._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you miss the angst? Because I did!  
> Sorry I kept you waiting, I really wasn't satisfied with this chapter. Am I now? No but I might as well post it!  
> \- ben


	7. Chapter 7

He's stuck between a dream and reality because he can see the room, he can see the door and he can feel every bit of his pain… But he can't move. He feels glued into position, forced to endure the fire spreading through his body.

There's a pair of boots right in front of him. He recognizes them but he doesn't allow himself to think it. He can't think of him, not now. Not in his most vulnerable moments because that could mean that he can never bring himself to get back up. 

_To be fair, I didn't know she was alive._

“Ben,” Armitage whispers and to his surprise, his throat allows the words to leave his mouth. 

_I'm glad you found her. You need friends, you know? I've never been good at being your friend._

“You're not real. Where are you?” Armitage asks and wishes he could look into Ben's face one last time. Or kiss him again, who cares if it's a memory or a ghost (do ghosts exist? Does Armitage wants ghosts to exist? Does he want to risk meeting Brendol and Pryde and all the men that hurt him?). There has been a time where Armitage couldn't look other men into the eyes. He always expected them to look through his facade, through the smile and the way he stood. Four years before his speech, four years before Starkiller Base, Phasma had gotten rid of his biggest fear. It had been like someone flipped a switch. He had looked at generals and troopers and Snoke and Ren. 

He looked at Poe and thought, “what an asshole” but he looked him in the eye. And Poe looked right back. 

He can't accept a world in which he'd be haunted by his father forever. 

_I sense the ghosts of the Jedi before us. I have to admit, Anakin looks better than you._

Apparently, Ben feels like ignoring every question Armitage asks. It's a little like their Supreme Leader/unimportant General act. They have done this for two years and sometimes Armitage is still bitter about it. Then again, the First Order was just the tool of the same religious force that had destroyed the republic and ruled the empire. He wouldn't want to be a General in _that_ world. He just wanted… his path to end somewhere good. 

“Who's Anakin?” Armitage asks. 

_Are you jealous?_

“I'm not jealous.”

Armitage isn't used to showing his feelings, neither the good ones nor the bad ones. Feelings give away intentions and those get him killed. Besides _,_ he isn't lying. Armitage isn't jealous of Rey in any sense Ben could understand. This is no universe in which Armitage and Ben could've been happy. They've reached a point of no return, multiple times. 

“To be honest with you, I'm more occupied with my injuries. Did you at least kill him for this?” 

_Too obvious. He went down with the fleet._

Ah. For some reason, Armitage doesn't like the thought of this. He has always counted on revenge somehow, _personal_ revenge. Revenge that sometimes was his own gun or Phasma's (for the effect. Everything for the aesthetic) or Kylo's lightsaber. They have worked their way through it, the _triumvirate_ indeed, and it has felt good. Genuinely good. It was Armitage's one joy at the First Order. Killing men who scared him, who deserved death so much. 

And Pryde didn't get this? 

Armitage got a scar. Pryde got an unsatisfying ending. 

_Hux?_

Armitage blinks to signal that he's listening. Whatever Ben is, a ghost, trapped somewhere, his imagination, he kneels down and brings his face closer to him.

_I'm going to try something. Do you trust me?_

“I've always trusted you.”

_I know._

That's some insider, isn't it? Something Han Solo had said, something Poe likes to repeat to make Chewbacca do whatever it is the Wookies do for a laugh. Does Ben _know_ that Armitage meant to say, “I love you” so many times it feels like a memory in his head? 

Ben's face disappears but there's a touch on Armitage's stomach. He inhales and he wants to say something but it's warm (not shower-lava warm, _comfortably_ warm) and it makes his pain fade away like it has never been there. He faintly notices that the same happens to his leg; like every pain is just getting unmade. Does that make sense? He's talking to a ghost, so maybe he's allowed to think like this. 

It's hard to stay awake now. Reality pulls him back, step by step. 

“Can you stay?” Armitage hears himself ask.

_I'm with you, I told you._

“You're not here.”

_I'm here. You can't always see me, that's all._

Ben pauses but Armitage senses that he's not done. He always knew when words lingered on his tongue. Kylo Ren loved hearing himself talk, almost as much as Armitage did. 

But Ben doesn't talk. He pulls Armitage up, holds his shoulders like he fears he's going to fall down again and kisses him. Armitage looks at him, the blue hologram-like silhouette he loved, he always loved and he never should've let go. 

\---

“Dude! She's a lesbian, of course she has a cat! Do you know how many cats Zori wanted to adopt last week?” 

Poe's blue holographic statue is grinning ever since Armitage accepted the call. If there's a heaven, maybe it's just what he's experiencing now. He's trapped on the couch, Phasma next to him and Millicent on his lap keeping him from getting up. Even though Phasma hasn't talked much ever since she found him next to the shower, Armitage knows that she's worried. She moves with the same tension than when she came into his quarter, four years before Starkiller Base, 

_“I need to propose something”_

_“What is it?” he had asked._

_“Promise me that this is not going to leave this room,” Phasma had said and Armitage had sat up a little straighter. He didn't have problems with keeping eye contact with her - although he wasn't sure if it was because her voice was high and soothing or because of the helmet blocking the view._

_“I promise,” he said._

_“I figured that we should get rid of General Brendol Hux.”_

_Armitage wondered if he should ask. She looked him straight in the eyes, everything about her was the ruthless soldier he knew but there was more behind it. More importantly, did she know? Many people did but they pretended not to._

_“I am not following,” he said. “I will count this as treason unless-”_

_“I know what he did. It's time to make him pay.”_

_That was all she said but her eyes were everywhere. On his hands, his face, on faded scars and right on his tortured soul._

“Hux?”

Poe's voice doesn't fit the things he saw in front of his eyes. Armitage blinks, frowns and finds himself in Phasma's living room, a cat on his lap and Poe's holo-silhouette looking at him. 

“Sorry?” he asks. 

“How many cats did Zori want to adopt last week? Guess.” 

“Seven,” Phasma answers for him without looking up from her datapad. 

“You can't just suggest a ridiculous number, that makes reality sound really lame,” Poe complains. 

“I can and I did,” Phasma replies deadpan. 

“You know, that's why Finn hates you,” Poe says, not fully serious but with a hint of truth in it. Armitage knows that Finn is glad that he isn't responsible for the death of Armitage's only friend. He had messaged him that, followed by a video of Poe trying to fit three pancakes at once in his mouth. That video is on Armitage's datapad somewhere because he saved it the second he got it. 

“And I hate _Finn_ because he managed to slip through a perfectly planned education program. A program both Armitage and I perfected.”

“I never took him for the teacher type,” Poe says. “Or you.” 

“Wonders never cease,” Phasma says and the look she gives Armitage at that tells him she did this on purpose. He raises an eyebrow at her. 

“What's that? You're doing something,” Poe says. “That look. What are you doing?” 

“We're making fun of you,” Phasma tells him. 

“Rude.” 

“Fair,” she disagrees. 

“To be honest,” Armitage starts, “I'm no longer angry at Poe for insulting my mother.”

“So I've been mean for absolutely no reason?” Phasma asks. 

“I thought that's just how you are,” Armitage says. 

“You're both terrible, terrible people,” Poe mutters under his breath. 

“I still have Finn's video and I'm not afraid to use it.” 

“ _Terrible, terrible people_ , Armitage! I'm glad you found each other. In a completely platonic way, obviously.”

It only happens for a brief moment, so Armitage isn't sure if he's seeing it correctly. Phasma's eyes darken with emotion, her face loses the softness and she turns into someone Armitage barely recognizes. She has always been honest with him. Always. 

Is that the face Phasma makes when she lies? If so, she's bad at it. She never had to be good at it, helmets do wonders for you. And it's a tiny thing, really, Armitage has been lied to before. He has lied countless times. But never, never to her. 

He nods and lets Poe do the talking. He must've stayed silent for long enough for Poe to realize that he didn't want to say anything, so Poe talks about Finn and Rey and the resistance rescuing children from the former Stormtrooper program and, _wait_. 

“You're rescuing children?” Armitage asks. “What do you do with them?” 

“Ever heard of adoption, Hugs? Not brainwashing kids? Family?”

Armitage rolls his eyes and hopes that the holo-quality doesn't translate that. 

“Would you send me the details?” he asks. “Just… I'd like to help.”

And be really wants to. The training was his work. He stole it from Brendol's undeserving hands and turned it into something good. He's proud of it, the fact aside that those were soldiers trained for a war they were going to die in. 

“I'm going to file you everything. Gotta ask Rey, she keeps the most notes.” 

“Did you lose them?” Armitage asks. 

“I lost _one_ child and this is what happens, Armitage.” 

“You lost a child?” Phasma asks. 

“That ginger bastard knew what she was doing.” 

“ _You lost a child?!_ ” she repeats, clearly distressed. 

“I found her, don't worry. She's currently playing chess with Chewbacca. He's losing because he doesn't cheat against a child. Speaking of, gotta go. See you, Armitage. I still hate you, Phasma.” 

“That feeling is mutual.” 

“Ouch,” Poe says. “Armitage, avenge me.”

And with that he ends the call and paints the room with his absence. 

In the silence, Armitage hears a voice, a voice that doesn't belong to Phasma or Poe or Millicent. A voice he's being haunted by - because ghost exist, even if it's just in your head. He's standing in front of a poisoned man again and that man orders him to lean closer and begs, 

_“You need to avenge me. If you are worth anything, bastard, you have to take revenge.”_

_Armitage smiled. There was weight dropping off his shoulders, slowly but steadily. He almost heard the sound of the chains dropping to the ground, he could finally move, finally_ breathe. _30 years of pain on his soul. 30 invisible years that Phasma's eyes somehow managed to spot._

_“You know, there's something fascinating about what happens to dogs that have been kicked as a pup. When we grow up,” he said, leaned closer to his father, not anxious at all. What unfolded in his stomach was power. “We learn how to bite.”_

_“Please-”_

_Armitage had wondered how it sounded like when Brendol said it. The weak, insignificant word fueled him like nothing ever did before. Oh, how the tables have turned._

_“It may surprise you but I trust Phasma.”_

_“She's going to kill you. Do you think you're important? You're nothing.”_

_Armitage shook his head, the strange smile still covering his mouth._

_“You're dying, General,” he told Brendol Hux. “And I enjoyed making that happen.”_

_With every step he walked towards something colorful. He has never felt this happy. Maybe he has never felt happy until now._

_Maybe,_

“I lied to you,” 

Armitage is pulled into reality. The colors come to a crashing halt and take his breath away. He's still on the couch, Phasma's sitting next to him. She not looking at him, her eyes are on something he can't see. 

“You lied to me?” he asks. 

“I assume that's we're taking a lie by omission into account-” she stops herself and takes a deep breath. For some reason, Armitage knows what's going to happen before it does. He knew it from the second she had not answered his question. Or maybe he only knew it when Ben mentioned Phasma. 

But he's sure of it. It wasn't a coincidence that he met her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: "Poe, Phasma and Hux reach sass levels only recorded in Obi-Wan Kenobi's presence".  
> I struggled a lot with formating the "ghost talk" in this one because Ao3 wouldn't let me use the same formating I usually use for nonverbal Force/mind communication. Please let me know if you have better ideas!  
> \- ben


End file.
